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ing gifts," though of so precious a quality as is universal popular education. A people can pay too high a price even for free public schools.

If on the other hand a community really desires to secure the elementary education of all children there are no insuperable obstacles to their so doing; without violating private rights or decreasing personal freedom.

In this, as in most other cases, "where there's a will there's a way" and the wise exercise of a little humanity and much tact, will avoid friction. By half time schools, by night classes, by Sunday schools, by a little wise benevolence in exceptional cases, and by offering special inducements for attendance, the desired end may be satisfactorily attained. When once general attendance is secured, the fact that what the child learns in school gives it a better chance in life, and also makes its labor of more money value to its parents, may be presumed to greatly lessen the main difficulty now experienced, namely, that the children stay so few years in school.

Now, while so much attention has been given to the disposition of the parent, a matter indeed of paramount importance in the decision as to whether the child shall attend school or not, nothing has been said about the child; while, in fact, after the child has been for some time at school, its own desires, in most instances, play a very important part in the decision as to its longer continuance in school, and just here the proposed new studies make a strong claim for consideration, in that they supply just the interest which, to many children, is wanting in the other studies; for many a child who finds books dull and school tasks irksome, delights to make things, and if this desire is gratified, as it will be where industrial drawing is taught, may be longer willingly held in school.

Further, it is often asserted, nor is it very vigorously denied, that the purely literary character of studies taught in the public schools has a tendency to prejudice the pupil against the employments of manual labor; that public school pupils desire the sedentary work of clerks, and book-keepers, rather than such work as is inseparable from the mechanic arts. They aspire to be something higher in the social scale than is the position conceded to a mere "mechanic"; as if the man who spends

*See passim, quotation from French writer in Professor Thompson's "Apprenticeship of the Future," Appendix P, Part II.

his days behind a counter in selling tape and taffeta, was more to be respected than he, at whose will lofty buildings arise, and whose brain plans the erections which his own and other strong hands make real! If it is true that our public schools instil false ideas about labor it is a matter of grave moment, but it may prove that our public schools, in this matter but reflect the opinion of that public which creates and supports them! This objection, however, hardly applies to the children of whom we have spoken, who remain too few years at school to there acquire any very definite ideas of social inequality, and whose apparent destiny it is to swell the teeming ranks of unskilled labor.

Of the value of universal industrial art training as affording to the pupils, and to the public, the most effective antidote against the poison of that snobbery which affects to despise honest labor, it will be in or der to discourse hereafter; at present we are concerned only with its economic aspect.

Yet the subject suggested, merits more than a passing reference. The evil arises not alone from the false ideas that may obtain among the older scholars in regard to the relative inferiority in dignity and impor tance of the workers in mechanic arts as contrasted with those who are occupied as clerks, book-keepers, etc., and it may be worth our while in considering the economic relations of these questions, to see if these false ideas of the older pupils are not the direct logical result of the training given in the schools. To examine also, whether this desire for the lighter occupations does not arise, in part, from stern necessity, does not come from the fact that the schools have fitted the pupil for no other industries; that, in short, there is nothing else that the boy or girl can do. The so called "education" given them has been so utterly one sided and narrow, that they go out into the world to enter the struggle of life with their fellows, with only a few of their faculties developed by school training; their very education limits them to a narrow range of occupations, and the very abundance of schools, each year graduating similarly trained pupils, makes it harder and harder for each one to earn a living; because the numbers seeking, and fitted for, the particular employments are annually increased, while there is no relative increase in the need for workers in these employments.

Let any one advertise in any city or large town, for a clerk or bookkeeper, and see the crowds of thoroughly competent applicants that will press forward for the place. At the same time let one advertise for a thoroughly skilled worker in any craft, or art, and it is safe to say

there will be no pressure of American public school graduates;- possibly a few German or French artificers may apply, but not many even of those, for persons possessing the requisite technical skill readily find employment.

The present school system ignores the productive faculties of man; consequently its training is insufficient. The weighty charge that could truthfully be urged against the public school education in the United States is, not that its teaching leads to a contempt by the pupils for honest labor with the hands; but, that it in no way fits the child for such labor. Training the child during the most plastic period of its life, it wholly ignores some of the productive faculties of the child's nature and so develops a monstrosity; a creature, whose receptive faculties are as morbidly increased as are the livers of the fattened geese of Strasbourg, while its powers of producing are limited to the use of a spoken or written language!

The brain, through the five channels of the senses, receives impressions which result in knowledge. It posseses the power of assimilating this knowledge and of giving it out again; for the human being is a producer, as well as an absorbent. Now the ideal of the proper training,-"education"-of such a being, would seem to be such as would result in the most complete development of all its powers; its powers of production, as well as of absorption.*

Art works are as true an expression of thought as art words. The sculptor's chisel, the goldsmith's hammer, the painter's brush, are as potent, and as honorable, as the poet's pen. The child at school, however, is taught nothing in regard to these truths, but is taught,- and so far rightly taught,-appreciation of the words of great writers and poets, while, unless happily there may be exceptions within the past few years, what public school has ever taught its scholars to look upon any works made by the hands, as just as truly and just as worthily, a manifestation of the thought of the maker, as the oration, or the poem, were the expression of the thought of Mr. Webster, or of Mr. Longfellow? One who has given much consideration to this subject of school training, and also to the fast coming difficulties that, foreshadowed in the labor riots of a few years ago, menace from the future

*For interesting illustrations of this topic, see address on "Industrial Education from a Business Standpoint" delivered by Mr. John S. Clark, of Boston, before the Board of Trade and the Franklin Institute of Philadelphia, June 6, 1881. Published by L. Prang & Co. Boston, 1881. pp. 19.

"These ought ye to have done and not to have left the others undone."

our crowded cities, suggests that from the schools must come our salvation, and through the development of the producing faculties of the child.

When all recognize that one who, for instance, hammers out a beautiful design in repoussé is just as truly embodying a thought, as one who writes a beautiful poem, then there will be no need of reading to the children, formal essays upon the "dignity of labor."

The schools have practically taught that letters were the only worthy form of expression for thought, and a literary education the only one to be given in schools. When the schools realize that, by not training the eyes and the hands of their pupils so that they may be able to express thoughts by the language of form, and of color, and by the making of things, as well as by the speaking or writing of words, they have been sending out their scholars, as it were, blind and maimed; for having eyes they saw not, and having hands and fingers they did not know how to use them, or how to make a single thing that any one wanted made, nor were they much better fitted to acquire industrial skill, than if they had never gone to school. When the schools realize this, and set seriously at work, as the Kindergarteners have done, and as one or two teachers of older children are now doing, notably Mr. Leland in Philadelphia and Mr. Adler in New York, to develop all the child's powers of expression; then, all forms of manual labor will be seen to be capable of artistic treatment, and, as means of expressions of thought, will at last be held of equal rank with skill in using words.

The vast majority of children in public schools are destined to earn their living by their own efforts. What are these schools doing towards fitting them for their future duties? This is a practical question; to it, it must be replied, that, while they are doing something, and something of very appreciable value, they, as yet, apparently from want of recognition of the needs of the pupils, and of their own ability to supply their needs, have failed to do for them what they ought to have done, and what they can do. The general recognition of their failure in these respects will be the first requisite for their reformation. The public schools will readily respond to the public demand.

EDUCATION IN RELATION TO SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC

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A knowledge of industrial drawing increases wages-Such knowledge can be acquired in the public schools-"Want of time no valid objection - The study valuable for mental discipline - Present schools not adapted to present needs, hence unsatisfactory- Why should public schools exist? The universal system of public schools affords to the United States unrivalled facilities for introducing industrial art training-England, in 1851, had no such appliances as the United States public schools supply - Causes of changed conditions of American labor American labor pays all the cost of all imported foreign art products Recapitulations of causes of changed condition of labor in the United States, and consequent necessity of change in the training given in public schools.

That elementary training in drawing increases the wage-earning capacity of the worker in all mechanical industries, is very generally conceded by investigators. Subsequently, in many places in the present work, both in the body of the work and in the several Appendices, there is presented a large amount of evidence that the training of the hand and eye acquired by sufficient practice in industrial drawing, such as has been afforded in many schools in Great Britain and on the continent, and in some public schools, and various other institutions in the United States,-adds sensibly to the wage-earning capacity of the pupil. It is also shown that this wage-earning capacity increases in direct ratio with the acquisition of increased knowledge and skill in drawing; so that, a worker in many of the mechanic arts who knows only enough of drawing to be able to read a drawing,' that is to understand what is meant by the lines when a working drawing is given him, is of more money value to himself and to his employer, than one who cannot thus work from a drawing; while he who can make working drawings for others to work from, is so much the more valuable. The inference is conclusive that, if industrial drawing can be taught the children of the public schools as generally and thoroughly as reading and writing are now taught, it will sensibly add to their wage-earning capacity; in other words will make them more serviceable as workers, and therefore of more money value to their par

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